


Count on me

by Menatiera



Series: Bingo Fills [15]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anticipation, Bucky finding himself, Danger levels, First Meeting, Happy Ending, M/M, One-Shot, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Through the Years, Winter Soldier POV, Winteriron Week, and his soulmate too, danger numbers, general winter soldier angst warning apply, it's a soulmate story of course it's a happy ending, soulmate tattoo, soulmate-identifying danger level tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menatiera/pseuds/Menatiera
Summary: "For some reason, the Asset knew that the number seven was impressive, and when he was out of the base and no one was watching, he traced the outlines of it with his metal finger."A soulmate tattoo shows how dangerous the soulmate is. Bucky's tattoo shows higher and higher numbers as time goes by. In the end, he finds the person behind the numbers, of course.





	Count on me

**Author's Note:**

> **Huge thanks to[Artemis Day](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Day/pseuds/Artemis_Day) for the danger meter soulmate tattoo idea and [Lokivsanubis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokivsanubis/pseuds/lokivsanubis) for the cheer reading! :)**
> 
> **Promtps:**
> 
>  _Vetés:_ They say sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war. (first / last sentence)  
>  _Winteriron Week:_ Day 1 - First meeting  
>  _Tony Stark Bingo:_ S2 - Image: Tony and the armor sitting next to each other on the couch from IM3.  
>  _Bucky Barnes Bingo:_ Y4 - Handle with care  
>  _Star Spangled Bingo:_ I5 - Soulmate AU.

They say sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war. The Asset could never believe in this luxury. The whole world was an endless war, every corner of it a new battlefield - he couldn't afford to lose the little ground he had.

But he knew he had to keep holding on, because he'd have an ally sooner or later. His number promised it.

***

The Asset didn't remember how or when he got the tattoo. It was okay _(it wasn't okay)_ \- he didn't remember a lot of things, due to his previous injury, the handlers said. _(The handlers lied.)_ The Asset had to trust the handlers. _(He didn't have any other choice, comply comply comply--)_ But he knew what the tattoo meant, though no one ever told him about it. 

It meant that he had a soulmate, like everyone else.

He showed the tattoo, of course. It would have been absolutely pointless to try to hide it. _(The Asset reports to the handlers and technicians.)_ The tattoo seemed to both excite and worry the men around him, started frantic conversations and enthusiastic whispers, while the Asset sat in his place and didn’t move.

Whatever agreement and ascertainment these conversations resulted in, they never shared with him.

He figured it wouldn't be good to let anyone know that he knew the _meaning_ of it, so he shut his mouth about it. He never asked questions _(the Asset doesn't ask questions)_ and proceeded with his missions as usual no matter how much he thought about the black lines curling on his wrist.

For some reason, the Asset knew that the number seven was impressive, and when he was out of the base and no one was watching, he traced the outlines of it with his metal finger. Seven. A magical number, like the days of the week, like the heads of dragons in fairy tales, like… like… But then his mark showed up and nothing else mattered but the shot and the Asset forgot that train of thought.

***

"It wasn't always seven," the Asset said to the technician working on his arm. The technician looked up at him, alarmed, but the Asset didn't reciprocate his gaze.

"What wasn't always seven?" the guy tentatively asked.

The Asset showed his wrist with the tattoo. _(The Asset reports to the handlers and technicians.)_

"I think it changed. It went up from… five, maybe. Or six." He paused, thoughtful. "I don't remember."

"You shouldn't worry about that," the technician said. The Asset nodded.

"I'm not worried." This once, it wasn't a lie.

***

The Asset was on a long-term mission on the February of 2008.

He was deployed to guard a safe house perimeter - and to ensure that the scientist held inside couldn't go anywhere else before finishing the project he was working on. The Asset was expected to do his job from the shadows but show itself for brief minutes whenever there was too much movement inside. A friendly reminder that he was still there, alert and inevitable.

There wasn't much to do there, though. _(Like in the war war war wa--)_ The Asset figured out quickly enough that he got this task just to make time pass while he was on standby for something bigger that potentially was about to happen, something that might need his expertise and what would need the fastest response time in his part, but the handlers wasn't sure if it was going to happen for real. _(The Asset doesn’t ask questions.)_

Anyway, he had time. A lot of time in his hands, and even the Asset could play with his weapons only so much.

He returned to his tattoo again and again. _(An ally.)_

He witnessed the exact moment when it ticked from seven to eight.

The Asset felt his lips curl into a grin, an expression long forgotten until now. _(Emotions are punished.)_

The higher the better, he figured.

"One day," he promised to the night, "one day we'll meet."

***

He had a brief detour to eliminate another target, and he did it to satisfaction. _(He kept the woman alive.)_ He got the blueprints his handlers wanted. He was sent back to the safehouse afterwards.

Barely three months after the shift in the number, still stuck to the boring mission of guarding a place that had no need to be guarded, the Asset noticed that the number wasn't eight anymore. _(Soulmate soulmate soulmate soulm--)_

It jumped straight to ten.

Something tempted him to keep it a secret _(don't let them know, they'll take it away, don't, don't)_ , but he knew how pointless that voice was.

He reported to the handlers. _(The Asset reports to the handlers and technicians.)_

He was put back in cryofreeze immediately.

***

The Asset tried to assess his own status even as he was dragged to the next room. By the grogginess, and the weakness in his muscles, he calculated that he wasn't put under for more than a few years at best.

Then the Chair came, with its earth-shattering pain, and he couldn't think anymore.

It was almost accidental that he looked at his wrist while reloading his gun, the sleeve of his gear slipped up, and he saw the number. _(Soulmate soulmate soulmate soulm--)_ He hesitated for a brief moment, but then filed it away for later and finished the mission instead. _(The Asset reports to the handlers and technicians.)_

What did eleven mean?

***

The Asset snapped and the mission snapped too and the Asset wasn’t the Asset anymore. _(Run run ru--)_

***

He was on the run for a while - on the run from everyone else, but mostly from himself. The battleground changed, but didn’t become less threatening.

He looked at his wrist on quiet evenings, and for the first time ever, he wondered what it meant that his wrist read twelve.

His memories were still shattered and fragmented, like his whole mind had been through the blender and the blades shredded everything there into tiny pieces, and he was trying to play puzzle with them, but he still knew what the tattoo meant.

He had a soulmate, and that soulmate was extremely dangerous.

According to conversations he unintentionally had listened into, the scale went from zero to ten.

So what did fucking _twelve_ meant?

And did he really want to know?

He had no illusions. He knew he himself was also on the highest level of the spectrum, whether it be ten or twelve or who knows how much it was. He was _the Winter Soldier_ , a serum-enhanced supersoldier trained for seventy years. Plus he was mentally unstable, he had just a thin layer or newborn personality hold together with prayer and duck tape, and it was covering a mountain of decades-long suppressed emotions, a shit ton of conditioning, and the ability to kill anyone with even the most innocent objects in the world.

He wasn’t sure anymore if it would be a stellar idea to combine him with another highly dangerous person.

***

He wondered if it was Steve.

It didn’t feel like it was Steve.

He would already know if it were Steve, right?

On the other hand, Captain America was dangerous enough to earn such a high ranking.

***

He wasn’t just tired. Well, mostly he was, but it wasn’t the reason he stopped.

As he pieced more and more together about himself, about who he was, about his past - as he reconnected with that person - he got too curious. It wasn’t an easy process, to reach through decades of pain and hurt, just to brush fingers with the old Bucky Barnes. It wasn’t more - too many things changed. He wasn’t Bucky Barnes anymore, at least not that version of him.

But he got close. He got some of his memories. He got part of his personality. It just changed. Twisted, and evolved, and twisted again, until he became the result. He was more complicated than the old Bucky, and more damaged too, but he had the same foundations, and he hoped it would be enough.

Not for Rogers, that was a whole other beehive he wasn’t exactly ready to poke, but for the Avengers in general.

A month after the team moved out of the Avengers Tower in the middle of Manhattan to a more secluded location in upstate New York, he walked up to their fence and politely knocked on their front gate.

***

He was greeted by the whole team, armed to the teeth.

He didn’t expect anything else.

 _Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war_ , people said. He wasn’t sure anymore that he wanted to _win_ , and he wasn’t sure anymore what _losing_ meant. This felt like both at the same time.

He raised his hands, palms out, and eyed Rogers only from the corner of his eyes. _(Rogers was held back, thank God, cookie for the brave ones for taking up the impossible task.)_ It was kind of funny, the giant blond man in armor all but sat on Captain America to stop him from running over.

“Are we really gonna do this here?” Iron Man asked, and his voice conveyed disbelief even though it was mechanically modulated.

He liked Iron Man. He liked the way he was as much machine as the Winter Soldier. He envied that apparently Iron Man could leave the machine behind and turn into a human being, while he couldn’t shed his metal arm and the metallic noises in his brain.

“Yes, because he’s here.” The Black Widow commanded the scene, and asked questions while at least three other members pointed weapons at him. 

His flesh hand itched, his metal one recalibrated with the urge to disarm them. He stayed in place and answered the questions instead, as honestly as he could. _(The Asset reports to the handlers and techn--)_

In the end, he was let in and led to a room and seemingly left alone.

He didn’t have to look for the cameras and microphones to know they were there, so he didn’t bother.

***

He didn’t know how other soulmates recognized each other. He had thought a lot about it, but never quite remembered the answer, and he couldn’t ask - he didn’t dare to look for an answer - maybe he never really believed he’d meet the person, after all. But the point was, he didn’t know.

Not until Stark walked into his room, the armor following separately, and the air was punched out from his lungs, and the room spun around, turned upside down then back again. His fingers were numb and his mouth dry and it felt like the snap out of the programming, but somehow also the opposite of it, both in a good way, in a warm, comfortable way. 

When he jumped after Rogers, he abandoned the only home, however terrible it was, that he knew, and embraced the unknown possibilities.

When Stark walked into the room, he arrived at a home he hadn’t known of before, but recognized instinctively. The feelings of _warmcalmsafe_ pulled him in almost against his will, and he blinked, overwhelmed. He was disarmed without being touched, and when he looked up at the face of Stark, he saw there the same startled disbelief mirrored what he felt.

Stark’s steps faltered, and he stopped, hands in his pockets. The fingers of the armor spasmed, then the armor stood next to the wall and didn't move anymore. He couldn't focus on it, despite the threat it could mean.

“You,” Stark said, tone carefully neutral.

He stared at the man. He knew that all of the Avengers were dangerous - he would’ve given, like, ten to all of them. But…

“Twelve?” he blurted out. It was better than what his instincts told him to do. It was better than if he’d got up and rub himself all over the man like a cat marking its territory. It was better than _hugging_ him. (He’d stab Stark in the back if the man tried to hug him unprompted.)

Stark just stared at him for a long moment, then grinned. “Have any problem with that, Snowflake?”

He shook his head.

“Show me,” Stark asked. It wasn’t a command. The tone wasn’t commanding at all, it sounded… soft, maybe even fragile.

He found himself moving, slowly wrapping his sleeve back to reveal the number twelve on his wrist, the black lines engraved under his skin. “It started as six, I think. But it kept getting higher,” he said. “It helped.”

Stark stepped closer, hand raised, then glanced at his face. “May I?”

He thought it through, then nodded.

Stark’s fingers traced the lines, light as a butterfly, tender as a spring rain. It felt like it didn’t touch only his skin but his nerves, too. It stifled the constant fire in his brain to smoldering ember. “I thought I’d be ten,” Stark admitted quietly.

He eyed the wrist, hidden from him under fabric, too tongue-tied to ask.

Stark understood it anyway, and pulled the hand back to unbutton the cuffs on it and finally reveal the tattoo that should mean him.

Eleven.

Stark’s wrist read eleven.

It was the same font like the one on his skin, the same straightness, the same curves, the same shade of black, the same even lines and definite edges.

He also reached out, but remembered the way Stark stopped. “May I?” He used the same words, and Stark smiled. 

“It’d be my pleasure,” the man, his soulmate, Tony reassured.

He traced the lines. He wasn’t sure his touch was as gentle as Stark’s, but Tony's skin felt like velvet under his fingertips, soft and perfect despite the tiny old scars peppering it, or maybe because of it. He could feel the bones under, and the pulse in the veins, drumming a life’s rhythm, getting faster as he caressed the lines.

“Yours is higher than mine,” he said.

“Yeah, higher than anyone else’s I know, except Rhodey, who’s also a twelve,” Stark shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. 

He didn’t know how much of that was honest and how much was an act. He looked up, studying Tony. “Do you think you could beat me if things came to that?”

Stark held his gaze. “I think I could keep you contained. At least long enough to get help, or you to get a hold on yourself, whichever happens first.”

He smiled. It was his first smile since he decided to seek out the Avengers, the first real smile in a long time. Something uncurled in his chest, a knot he wasn’t aware of until that point, and he leaned back, leaving his chest open, his shoulders dropped. “Good,” he murmured. “I’ll stay here if you want me.”

Tony didn’t ask this time, just sat down next to him and flipped up his hand to caress his palm. “I want you to stay, Terminator. I’d like to get to know you properly.”

He decided, in the spur of the moment. He didn’t plan ahead, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad idea, but it felt right.

“James,” he said. “Call me James.”

***

He still wasn’t sure if that day had been a win or a lose. Maybe both. 

Their wrists read thirteen. The number changed after their first kiss, tentative and shy and uncertain gesture at that time.

Maybe people weren’t as stupid as James had thought, and maybe he could’ve afford to lose some ground.

In exchange he had found the ally he hoped for, and so much more. He wouldn’t face the next war alone. Maybe some sayings had some inherent truth in them, however stupid they sounded.

Maybe sometimes you really have to lose a battle to win a war.


End file.
